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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27396850">hot elves on a cold night</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainriza/pseuds/captainriza'>captainriza</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Adventure Zone (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Campaign: Balance (The Adventure Zone), Gen, IPRE Crew | Starblaster Crew as Family, IPRE shenanigans, Light dose of angst, Stolen Century, magnus is in it i swear but like. not a lot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:34:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,401</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27396850</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainriza/pseuds/captainriza</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Stupid fucking ice planet,” Taako wheezes, whipping off his snow-dampened gloves and thrusting his hands over the fire. “Fuck!"</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>In Absolutely The Most Sibling-y Sense, Lup &amp; Taako (The Adventure Zone)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>short adventure zone fics</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>hot elves on a cold night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>for @taznovembercelebration on tumblr—day 4, "by the fire" theme. This is the first of a couple short fics I'll be posting for the taz november celebration—all of them are purely for vibes, not for quality content, but I hope you enjoy them nonetheless.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Stupid fucking ice planet,” Taako wheezes, whipping off his snow-dampened gloves and thrusting his hands over the fire. “Fuck!”</p>
<p>He regrets it instantly and draws his hands back, fingertips singed and stinging. He sucks on his thumb, stymied, the warmth of his breath against his knuckles barely touching the deep cold threatening to numb his exposed flesh.</p>
<p>He shoots a halfhearted glare at Lup tending to the fire beside him, lazily shooting bursts of flame into the crackling woodpile. “Can you maybe make it a little hotter? Or like, something besides lukewarm? I can’t feel my fucking face over here.”</p>
<p>She shoots him back a scathing look in response. The tips of her ears are a bright cherry red, her cheeks just a shade lighter. She’s bundled in three patchwork coats and has a scarf pulled up close around her neck, flyaway strands of yarn and fluff sticking to her lips as the harsh winter wind whips around them. She plplplbths, spitting the fluff out. “I’m doing my best, hot shit, does it look like I’m enjoying this?”</p>
<p>“Oh, no, Lup, I thought you LOVED—” Taako’s bitter jab is cut off by a whole-body shiver. It makes him bite his own tongue, and he lets out a stream of curses, clamping his arms in a vice over his knees in an attempt to preserve what’s left of his rapidly-waning body heat. “Gah!”</p>
<p>“I can’t turn up the heat, dumbshit, we’re sitting on ice,” Lup says, more to herself, the annoyance in her voice at her own impotence cut only by how hoarse she sounds. She massages her throat gently, making a face.</p>
<p>“Make the fire elf go on a mission on the ice mission, what a good idea,” she mocks, stirring the fire up to a crackling peak with a pointed vengeance. The ice melts slightly around the wood, dampening the ends. In seconds, the smoke turns black and fills the air around the fire, working its way into the twins’ noses and eyes. Lup curses ungracefully.</p>
<p>“Here,” Magnus says, appearing behind Taako and draping a cloak over his shoulders. Taako slumps under the weight, curling his stiff fingers around the heavy cloth. “Thanks, Magnus. Hey, quick Q—how are you not freezing your ass off right now?”</p>
<p>“My ass is toasty,” Magnus says. “Here, look.”</p>
<p>Magnus reaches under his ill-fitting eelskin coat, gifted by a particularly enamored young village woman, and pulls out a small burlap sack. He palms it and pulls the cord gently, so the top starts to unravel. Steam escapes from the sack, curling upwards until it’s snatched by the wind. Taako’s eyes widen. “You sneak!”</p>
<p>The sack, full of uncooked grain, wafts a not-unpleasant peaty scent over to Taako. It’s almost enticing after frankly too many weeks of poorly-cooked blubber. When they stayed at the village, the food was divine—inspirational, even. None of them had mastered how to cook it though, and even Davenport’s best attempts were unfruitful and generally tasted worse than they looked. “I thought we ate it all!”</p>
<p>“Don’t tell,” Magnus says, putting a conspiratorial finger to his lips. Taako shoots a conspiratorial look towards Lup, who mouths, <em>there’s no one else here?</em> as Magnus roots around in his jacket, his muscles bulging comically as he tries to stretch to reach the pockets on the back. Finally, he digs up a second and third sack, tossing them unceremoniously in the fire.</p>
<p>“Wh-” Lup starts to object, but the sacks don’t catch flame. Instead, they sit in the embers and start to steam, the scent of fresh grain wafting up to their nose.</p>
<p>“Divine,” Taako breathes, closing his eyes, warmed for just a moment. After an impatient few seconds, Magnus dips his hand in the fire and quickly grabs the sacks by their ties.</p>
<p>“Owch! Fuck!” He yells, clearly not having been quick enough to avoid a light scorching. He flexes his fingers, tossing the sacks between his hands, still steaming.</p>
<p>“Magnus, buddy,” Taako begins, the beginnings of a wicked smile in his tone, but Magnus turns and presents him with one of the sacks, and Taako quickly redacts his scathing roast of Magnus’ empty skull. “Ooh!”</p>
<p>Taako takes it into his hands, and Magnus turns to Lup and hands her the second sack. She takes it gratefully, pressing it to her face and breathing in the steam.</p>
<p>“Fuck, that’s nice. Thanks, Mag.”</p>
<p>The brief respite from the biting cold, no matter how pleasant, only serves to make Taako angrier. He sits and seethes on this frozen hunk of ice, ever-aware of the hulking shape of the Starblaster marooned miles behind them in the distance. If it weren’t for their own bad judgement in the beginning, they wouldn’t be walking across a fucking tundra to find the Light.</p>
<p>While Taako seethed, twin suns had dipped behind the horizon, leaving a gradient of blues and pinks behind in their wake. The pinks were now turning darker, the blues fading into the dark black of the universe, stars alight. He tries not to think dwell on its familiarity—you’re here now, you’re stuck here, you can’t change it—but it tugs on him all the same.</p>
<p>“Look,” Lup breathes, pointing to something in the distance. Taako bobs his head, trying to look from her angle.</p>
<p>“What? Oh, quelle suprise, more ice. Never woulda guessed.”</p>
<p>“No, doofus,” Lup says, pointing to a spot in the horizon past a cluster of massive glaciers. Taako still sees nothing but white, stretching on for miles, dim in the new dusk. Then, Lup clamps her hands around his ears and yanks, turning his head to line up with her own visions.</p>
<p>“Ow!” He complains, starting to slap her hands away—but then he sees it. Faint, but visible—a speck of light, different than the stars, shines from a snowbank just in their field of vision. The snow must have melted enough over the course of the day to finally reveal it. They had been right.</p>
<p>Taako scrambles to his feet, still smarting from the days’ journey, and rushes to get to his bag.</p>
<p>Lup, a step ahead, extinguishes the fire quickly and spreads the logs across the ice. They skitter away from where she sits, punctuated with pops and crackles as the fire is lost to the icy air.</p>
<p>“Magnus!” Lup yells, hoarse. Taako frantically rustles through his bag, pushing past supplies before he finally whips out an ice-cold compass. He shakes it between his hands for luck, and points it with flair at the snowbank with its eminent light. North.</p>
<p>“YES!” Taako hollers, tossing the compass to Lup, who barely catches it in her big puffy gloves. She fumbles and holds dramatically it up to the Light, a perfect mirror of his own actions, and a triumphant smile spreads across her face.</p>
<p>“We found it!” Lup yells at Magnus.</p>
<p>“Let’s go,” Magnus says.</p>
<p>They walk across the ice in victorious silence, eager trepidation palpable even after ten, twenty, thirty cycles. It was never a guaranteed win, but it always felt like something. Now, there would be a new goal—notably, a goal that could be accomplished from the warmth of the Starblaster. Taako hoots, his voice echoing over the stretches of tundra.</p>
<p>“FUCK yes!”</p>
<p>Magnus makes it there first, digging through the snowbank with his bare hands. He pulls the Light up, snow coating his shoulders and hair, lifting it over his head triumphantly. Taako turns to Lup to celebrate, but her expression is unreadable, partially masked by her thick coat.</p>
<p>“What?” She wrings her fingers, finally turning to him, her expression a storm of emotion.</p>
<p>“Just once,” she says, iron in her voice. “Just once I’d like it to feel like it’s the last time.”</p>
<p>She lets that sit, and Taako turns it over slowly. He grabs her shoulders and pulls her in close, sheltering her against the wind as they watch Magnus dance through the snow, the Light as his partner, catching the wind and spinning multicolored beams onto the icy ground.</p>
<p>Taako rests his head on hers. “I know,” he says. “But—” He hesitates, the urge to mince his words so forefront on his tongue that he has to bite back the lies before they spill out. Finally, he settles on telling her what he tells himself. A motivational falsehood. A hollow prayer.</p>
<p>“You’ve gotta believe. You’ve gotta believe that one day it will be.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>visit me @wildecrow on tumblr!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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